In 1895, Ignaz Schwinn and his partner, Adolph Arnold, incorporated the Arnold, Schwinn & Company in Chicago to produce bicycles. In the early years with bicycle products such as the “Roadster,” a single-speed bike that weighed 19 pounds, Schwinn products appealed to people of all ages as a means of transportation. By 1900, bicycles could go as fast as 60 miles per hour. Because of the advent of the auto in 1909, the use of bicycles as a means of transportation in the United States waned. In that same year, Schwinn developed manufacturing advances that allowed bicycles to be made more cheaply and sturdily. These advances opened a new market to the company as they manufactured and sold bicycles for children for the first time. Meanwhile, Ignaz Schwinn bought out Arnold to become the sole owner of the company. Over the next 20 years, Schwinn bought out two motorcycle companies and developed mudguards as its major technological achievement. In the 1930s, Schwinn developed a series of quality, appearance, and technological breakthroughs including the balloon tire, which some say was the biggest innovation in mountain bike technology; the fore-wheel brake; the cantilever frame; and the spring fork. In 1946, built-in kick-stands were added to their bikes. In the 1950s, Schwinn began an authorized dealer network and expanded its parts and accessory programs.In the 1960s, Schwinn expanded into the fitness arena with in-home workout machines. In 1967, the company became the Schwinn Bicycle Company. The company introduced the air dyne stationary bike in the late 1970s. In 1993, the company filed for bankruptcy, and in 1994, it was moved from Chicago to Boulder, Colorado, to be nearer the mountain bike scene. In the next several years, Schwinn’s mountain bike products won accolades and awards. In 2001, Pacific Cycle, the United States’ largest importer of quality bicycles, purchased Schwinn and united Schwinn bicycle lines with Pacific Cycle’s other brands. Under new management in 2002, Schwinn bicycles began being featured, along with Pacific Cycle’s other bikes, at mass retail outlets in the United States. In 2004, Dorel Industries, Inc., a global consumer products company located in Madison, Wisconsin, purchased Pacific Cycle and made it a division of Dorel. Schwinn bicycles, now a part of the Dorel Empire, are still made with quality for dependability and performance, and they continue to lead the industry in innovation.

Discussion1. What is the age of the target market for Schwinn bikes? One theory is that in locales where mountain bikes are more popular, the mean age of their customers is older than in locales where relatively little mountain biking is done. In an attempt to test this theory, a random sample of Colorado Springs customers is taken along with a random sample of customers in St. Louis. The ages for these customers are given here. The customer is defined as “the person for whom the bike is primarily purchased.” The shape of the population distribution of bicycle customer ages is unknown.Analyze the data and discusses the implications for Schwinn manufacturing and sales.Colorado Springs .. St.Louis29 .......... 1138 .......... 1431 .......... 1517 .......... 1236 .......... 1428 .......... 2544 .......... 149 .......... 1132 .......... 823352. Suppose for a particular model of bike, the specified weight of a handle bar is 200 grams and Schwinn uses three different suppliers of handle bars. Suppose Schwinn conducts a quality-control study in which handle bars are randomly selected from each supplier and weighed. The results (in grams) are shown next. It is uncertain whether handle bar weight is normally distributed in the population.Analyze the data and discuss what the business implications are to Schwinn.

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3. Quality technicians at Schwinn’s manufacturing plant examine their finished products for paint flaws. Paint inspections are done on a production run of 75 bicycles. The inspection data are coded and the data analyzed using Minitab. If a bicycle’s paint job contained no flaws, a 0 is recorded; if it contained at least one flaw, the code used is a 1. Inspectors want to determine whether the flawed bikes occur in a random fashion or in a nonrandom pattern. Study the Minitab output. Determine whether the flaws occur randomly. Report on the proportion of flawed bikes and discuss the implications of these results to Schwinn’s productionmanagement.
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